Don't burst into rears...

WTF: Weekly Trivia File

Ricky Gervais once saved Python star Terry Jones's dog from drowning in a pond on London's Hampstead Heath.

But when he's on set, he hates any sort of noise. 'This isn't me being precious or a diva,' he says. 'But I like quiet when I'm acting. You know when I don't like the cameraman chewing gum or anybody sniffing. Or I can hear an ant climbing over cotton wool. I'll be like, "what's that noise?" While filing the Invention of Lying, Jennifer Gardner started blowing a bubble with her gum, I went "What the fuck are you doing?" Then her cellphone rang.

Peter Kay decided that the audience at the Manchester comedy club where he used to compere took too long to warm up, so he borrowed a sounds effects CD from his local library that included a track of a lively pub background, which he played on repeat to get the punters in the mood. All went well until two minutes in when someone on the CD won the jackpot on the fruit machine – causing everyone to look around and see that there was no fruit machine in the building. When the same thing happened four minutes later, Kay had to shame-facedly admit to the crowd what he had been doing.

Announcing that ITV has decided not to commission a fourth series of Kingdom, Stephen Fry accidentally twittered: 'Don't all burst into rears at once.'

Russell Brand is said to want to have the lyrics to Morrisey's song Whatever Happens, I Love You tattooed on his body to show his love for new girlfriend Katy Perry. The lyrics read: 'Cold loving prose, we stole each other’s clothes/ But when all is said and done, it’s you I love.'

In his new book, Tickling The English, Dara O Briain recalls a gig in Tunbridge Wells, when he was distracted by a ‘wooo’ sound from the darkness of the audience – which he took to be the annoying noise some people make if they deem a joke too rude. But it didn’t come after particularly risqué material, or even after punchlines. Eventually, O Briain decided to address it. ‘Is there a whale in the room?’ he asked. ‘Or is I just me? You can all here that, can’t you? Or am I like the Sixth Sense for whales? Do the ghosts of dead whales want me to settle unfinished business for them?’ An extended improvised riff about the situation esnued. Sitting in the dressing room during the interval, O Briain congratulated himself on a great performance. ‘That went well, didn’t it?’ he beamed at his tour manager, who replied. ‘Um, well we’ve just had someone knock on the stage door and ask if you could stop picking on the mentally handicapped guy.’

Canadian stand-up Mike Wilmot wound up at the dentists' after dinner in Hong Kong and chomping down on what he thought was a dumpling. He said: 'I heard a crunch. I bit into the beak of a bird. You don't bite into things that are made to bite into other things. It's like biting into teeth.'

SOURCES: ITN, Metro, Saturday Night Peter by Peter Kay, Twitter , The Sun, YouTube, Tickling The English by Dara O Briain, Montreal Gazette